


tea & sympathy

by talkwordytome



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017), The Worst Witch - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Humor, Sickfic, Sweet, i watched all of season 1 in two days friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24306643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkwordytome/pseuds/talkwordytome
Summary: Miss Hardbroom took a sip of her own tea and considered Mildred for a long moment. “I am very rarely surprised by anything,” she eventually said, “but you, Mildred Hubble, never fail to surprise me.”Mildred choked slightly on a mouthful of tea. “Is that…good?” she asked when she was done coughing.“I…am not sure,” Miss Hardbroom said honestly.or, in which Miss Hardbroom has a cold and Mildred Hubble finds that, quite frankly, unacceptable.or, in which I am a Gay Mess with a New Hyper-Fixation who is Also Extremely In Love with Miss Hardbroom.
Relationships: Hardbroom & Mildred Hubble
Comments: 27
Kudos: 104





	tea & sympathy

**Author's Note:**

> This is really just a bit of sweet, warm silliness I wrote when some other fic I'm working on was getting too dark and sad. I hope people who are not me enjoy it!

Mildred Hubble, as usual, was running late. She sprinted down the long corridor towards the potions classroom, fruitlessly hitching up her left stocking as it slipped down her left leg. She’d plaited her hair rather haphazardly when she’d realized she’d slept all the way through breakfast, and one of the plaits threatened to come loose with every step she took. If she was late it would be the third time that month, and Miss Hardbroom would give her detention for certain. 

She threw open the door to the potions classroom mere seconds before the final bell rang from its tower. “Made it!” Mildred sighed as she settled into her seat next to Maud. 

Though, Mildred noted as she looked around the room, it didn’t seem that it would have mattered if she _had_ been late. Her first form class was chatting animatedly with each other, and every so often an enchanted origami bat or bird flew across the room. No one had their books open, and Miss Hardbroom was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s HB?” Mildred asked as she fixed her lopsided plaits. “I don’t think I’ve _ever_ beaten her to class before.”

Enid turned around in her seat. She had a decidedly mischievous grin on her face but that, at least, wasn’t at all unusual. “She’s _ill_ ,” Enid said, evidently delighted by this news. “Felicity heard Miss Cackle talking to Miss Drill this morning and she said HB’s got a _dreadful_ cold. She might be out for the rest of the week. We’re meant to have a supply witch, but she’s not here yet.”

“Don’t be silly,” Mildred said. “She _can’t_ be. Witches don’t catch cold, and HB definitely _doesn’t_ catch cold. Right…?”

“You are _such_ a beetle-brain, Mildred Hubble,” Ethel said bossily from her seat at the front of the class. “Witches can get colds just like anyone else, and there’s no way to cure them with magic, either. We do treat them _much_ more effectively than regular people, but of course you wouldn’t know that, would you?”

Maud rolled her eyes. “Nobody likes a smarty-pants, Ethel,” she said. Ethel stuck out her tongue, flipped her ponytail over her shoulder, and turned back around in her seat.

“So she’s really ill?” Mildred asked. 

“Yeah, but who cares?” Enid asked, flicking a paper football at Drusilla. “It’ll be a lovely break. Anyway, if there’s anyone who deserves a streaming cold it’s HB.”

“I don’t think anyone ever deserves to feel badly,” Mildred said, frowning. “Not even her.”

“Come _on_ ,” Enid said, tugging on one of Mildred’s plaits, “you can’t honestly tell me you don’t feel the teensiest bit _pleased_ that all the mean things she’s done to you have finally come back to bite her? Maud, make Millie see reason.”

“She has a point, Millie,” Maud said, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Maybe this is just the universe…making it up to you.”

“Well, I don’t want it,” Mildred said stubbornly. “The universe can keep it. I think it’s a rotten trick.” 

Enid shook her head and sighed. “You really are ridiculous, Millie,” she said. “You know that?”

The supply witch, a doddery old woman in billowing robes, walked into the room and the chatter began to quiet. “Do you think she has anyone to take care of her?” Mildred whispered to Maud as the supply witch wrote their daily assignment on the blackboard. “HB, I mean. You know, to fix her tea and get her medicine.”

Maud furrowed her brow. “She’s a grown-up, Millie,” she whispered back, opening her potions book. “She doesn’t need things like that. Anyway, do you _really_ think HB would let someone see her when she’s not feeling well?”

“No, I suppose not,” Mildred sighed.

She flipped to the specified page in her potions book and began to read. She chewed on the end of a plait contemplatively as her mind began to drift. Everyone deserved a bit of care when they were ill, surely. Being ill was already terrible enough, and it didn’t seem right for someone to have to suffer through it alone. 

As Mildred Hubble took her notes on vanishing potions without really paying attention to what she was writing, she began to formulate a plan.

* * *

For the third time in ten minutes, Mildred lowered the hand she’d raised to knock on the door and began to walk the opposite way down the hall. She stopped after about ten steps, squared her shoulders, and took a deep breath. She hitched her rucksack up higher on her shoulders and shifted her weight from foot to foot.

“Come on, Millie,” she whispered to herself, “you can do this. She’s not so scary. She’s just a person, that’s all. Just a…completely and totally petrifyingly terrifying person.”

She sighed and walked back in the direction she’d just come from. Once she was in front of the door yet again, she screwed her eyes shut, counted to ten, and knocked three times. She opened a single eye when she didn’t hear the familiar click-clack of high-heeled boots on stone. She opened the other eye when the door remained firmly closed nearly ten seconds after her knock. _Maybe she fell asleep, or maybe she’s in her bedchamber instead of her office, or maybe she went to the sanatorium, or maybe_ \--

The door swung open so abruptly that Mildred shrieked and tripped backwards, landing squarely on her bottom. “Ow,” she said, wincing. “That’s going to bruise.”

“Mildred Hubble.” 

Miss Hardbroom stood above Mildred, surveying her with a mix of sleepy confusion and displeasure. Her hair was loose from its bun and she was wearing a dressing gown. She was paler even than usual, except for her nose, which was very red. She looked, Mildred thought, quite miserable, though she had enough sense to keep that observation to herself.

“What, pray tell, have I done to earn this…visit?” Miss Hardbroom asked, eyebrows raised.

Mildred realized she was still sitting where she’d fallen, and she scrambled up. “Miss Hardbroom! I just--I thought that…well, I thought--and Enid said that you were…but that I shouldn’t--except that I _wanted_ to, and….” Mildred stammered as Miss Hardbroom’s eyebrows rose higher and higher.

“Were you planning on seeing any of those sentences through to completion?” Miss Hardbroom asked. 

Mildred brushed a few errant strands of hair from her eyes and shrugged her rucksack off her shoulder. She thrust it into Miss Hardbroom’s hands. Miss Hardbroom gave the rucksack the same look she might give an especially slimy toad. “Biscuits,” Mildred blurted. “I brought biscuits from my--my tuckbox.” She fidgeted with the collar of her robes. “Enid said that you…that you were, well, ill, and I thought maybe I could…help.”

Miss Hardbroom stared at Mildred with an expression Mildred couldn’t read. Mildred fought the urge to squirm. At the very least, Mildred supposed, it wasn’t an irritated expression. If there was one thing Mildred had reliably learned how to do during her months at Cackle’s, it was to read every single one of Miss Hardbroom’s irritated expressions. And she had a veritable library of irritated expressions.

“Would you like to come in for tea, Mildred Hubble?” Miss Hardbroom asked suddenly.

For a moment, all Mildred could do was blink. “Tea?” she parroted. “With you?”

Miss Hardbroom rolled her eyes up towards the ceiling. “Yes, you foolish girl,” she said, but her voice was too weary and congested for the words to have any real bite to them. “Typically the person extending the invitation for tea gets to participate in the ritual as well.”

“I--yeah! Oh. I mean, yes. Yes, I would like to have tea. With…you,” Mildred said.

Miss Hardbroom stepped aside and gestured for Mildred to enter her study. It was much cozier than Mildred had expected it to be, with a fire going in an enormous stone hearth and two high-backed, dark purple armchairs. There were a few potion bottles--medicines, Mildred supposed--scattered on Miss Hardbroom’s otherwise impeccably tidy desk, along with a crumpled handkerchief.

“There’s no need to look so shocked,” Miss Hardbroom said, correctly assessing Mildred’s silence and gaping mouth. “I like a comfortable study as much as the next witch.”

Mildred blushed. “Should I--?” she asked, looking uncertainly at the chairs. 

“Well, you can’t very well take tea standing up, can you?” Miss Hardbroom said. 

Mildred settled herself in an armchair, which was softer than it looked. She opened her rucksack, pulled out her biscuit tin, and set it on her lap. “They’re, um, chocolate biscuits,” she said as Miss Hardbroom set the kettle on a hotplate and prepared the tea tray. “Is that alright? They’re all my mum knows how to make, actually. But they’re really, really good, promise.”

Miss Hardbroom made a small noise in the back of her throat that could’ve been due to illness or irritation. When she said nothing in reply, Mildred felt compelled to continue filling the silence. “Class was boring today, without you,” she babbled. “All we did was take notes on vanishing potions; we didn’t even get to make one. And the supply witch kept nodding off at her desk.” Here, Mildred giggled. “She was so old that Enid said she’d maybe died but she was just sleeping. We drew straws and Drusilla’s was shortest so she had to check.” She took a breath and pulled anxiously on a plait. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all that.”

“Nor do I,” Miss Hardbroom said, the corners of her mouth twitching in such a way that it almost seemed like she might smile. But no, Mildred thought, that was impossible. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen Miss Hardbroom smile, and the smiles had certainly never been directed at _her_.

Miss Hardbroom carried the prepared tea tray over to the table between the armchairs and set it down. She took a seat in the vacant chair next to Mildred. “Would you like sugar in your tea?” she asked.

“Oh,” Mildred said, “yes, please. Is, um, three scoops alright?”

Miss Hardbroom wrinkled her nose but added the requested three scoops nonetheless, then handed the gently steaming mug to Mildred. “Thank you,” Mildred said quietly, then blew across the surface of her tea to cool it.

Miss Hardbroom took a sip of her own tea and considered Mildred for a long moment. “I am very rarely surprised by anything,” she eventually said, “but you, Mildred Hubble, never fail to surprise me.”

Mildred choked slightly on a mouthful of tea. “Is that…good?” she asked when she was done coughing.

“I…am not sure,” Miss Hardbroom said honestly. 

She pulled a lacy black handkerchief out from one of her robe’s pockets and stifled two discreet sneezes into it. “Bless you,” Mildred offered once Miss Hardbroom was done blowing her nose. “I’m sorry you’re ill. It’s rubbish having a cold.”

“Yes,” Miss Hardbroom said slowly, “it is… _rubbish_ , indeed.”

“Do you need anything?” Mildred asked. “I mean, is there anything you like when you’re sick? My mum always gets me a carton of my favorite rainbow sherbet when I’ve got a sore throat, and sometimes she’s makes me mashed bananas on toast, which is sort of gross but it’s all I would eat when I was sick as a kid, and--”

“Mildred,” Miss Hardbroom said, holding up a hand, “you needn’t sound so _worried_. It’s nothing more than a ridiculous, pointless head cold. It will be gone in a matter of days.”

“Miss Hardbroom,” Mildred said, with an eyebrow raise that could rival Miss Hardbroom’s best, “it’s alright for people to worry about you _sometimes_ , you know. It means they care about you.”

“I, too, am well-versed on the full spectrum of human emotion,” Miss Hardbroom said dryly, “but that does not mean I need anyone worrying about me presently. I assure you that I am more than fine.” Though the way her voice cracked and gave out at the end of her sentence did not inspire much confidence.

The dinner bell rang. “You’d best be off,” Miss Hardbroom said, collecting Mildred’s mug, “or you will be late.”

“I can come back here to eat, if you’d like more company?” Mildred offered, collecting her things.

Miss Hardbroom paled at this suggestion. “That is very…generous,” she said, “but, no, I think not.”

Mildred deflated slightly, her shoulders slumping. She slipped her rucksack back on but pointedly left the biscuit tin sitting next to the tea tray. “Good bye, Miss Hardbroom,” she said. “Thank you for the tea.”

She was nearly out the door when Miss Hardbroom’s voice stopped her. “Mildred.”

Mildred turned around. “Yes, Miss Hardbroom?”

Miss Hardbroom swallowed and pursed her lips. “Thank you,” she said, “for your…visit. It was--” here, she faltered, then tried again. “Just…thank you.”

Quickly, before she could question the logic of what she was about to do, Mildred rushed forward and threw her arms around Miss Hardbroom. Miss Hardbroom, to her credit, only briefly stiffened before encircling her own arms around Mildred as well. After a minute or two, she cleared her throat, and Mildred jumped back, grinning. “I really hope you’re feeling better soon, Miss Hardbroom,” she said cheerfully. “Potions just really isn’t the same without you.”

“No,” Miss Hardbroom murmured once Mildred was out of the room, “I imagine it isn’t.”

She sat down in her armchair, rubbing her temples as she tried to figure out what, precisely, had just transpired. For all of Mildred Hubble’s faults--her many, many, _many_ faults--Cackle’s was certainly never… _boring_ , when she was around. She took a bite of one of the chocolate biscuits Mildred had left behind and smiled to herself.

Mildred was right; they really _were_ delicious.

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all, all I want is to write like 100 fics in which Mildred is sweet and warm and HB is charmed by it in spite of herself, and is like, "Ugh, fine, I'll be your mentor; goddess knows you need a good one, you ridiculous child." I.e. my relationship with like...every teacher I had throughout my childhood.
> 
> I also v much plan to write some Hicsqueak fic but I am only on episode 3 of season 2 and need to see them interact a bit more first.


End file.
